I vaguely recall first hearing the term applied to DJ Shadow with Endtroducing, which came out in 1996. And then it seemed to be around all those Bay Area DJs like Scratch Pickles and Q-Bert and Cut Chemist, who may not have actually been BA. Long time ago. There’s a slight blur.
Anyway, the real point is that the concept of “digging” being invented at any particular time is rubbish. The word may have been coined in the ‘90s but the practice has existed for damn near as long as there’ve been records. I’ve been at it since the late ‘60s. Couldn’t pass a record store - sorry, shop - without going in. Riffle through all the racks. Obsess over weird sleeves and unknown artists. Go to obscure parts of town and find junky places with no organization at all, but 7” everywhere. Stake out shops and visit again and again, searching for new items and buying up what I could as cash was on hand. I had a circuit in San Francisco in the ‘80s with about 15 places I’d check out every week or so, usually on my bicycle. When it got to the point of the notorious road trips to pokey little towns and ripping the relevant pages out of all the phone books I lost interest. Too damn competitive. And, of course, I knew that by some people’s standards I was a rank amateur, and loving it is the point.
I like to imagine that RA might consider commissioning a video of me wandering vacantly around North London charity shops and rifling through local record shop bargain bins, with occasional close-ups of my face as I ponder the labels and sleeves of the few bits of obscure euro-pop that I come across. Plus maybe a few scenes of me exchanging slightly awkward record-related banter with record-shop staff and record producer types as I attempt to convince them to accept my break-laden finds in part-exchange for some obscure underappreciated 80s Brit-boogie 12" with a cool dub mix on the b-side.
Kind of disappointed as someone who writes scripts to comb through discogs more efficiently and in a way that fits my needs more. This one I’m doing now sorts sets of records by the ratio of people who want it to people who have it. Which sometimes has zero to do with danceability, but in some subgenres correlates strongly to danceability.
That is very impressive, have you found some good gems this way?
The takeaway i took from this is that by adding a different style than you’d normally look for to the search (in her case “abstract”) you end up with things that are harder to classify and therefore might end up with more interesting tracks. Not really something i had considered, but i think everyone on this forum probably has their own way of finding gems on Discogs.
The script accesses Discogs’ database via an API (to do this, you need to fill out their form that you’re making something on their developers site to get a pass-key). I then make a query for music releases by year, style, and country. It calculates a ratio of how many people want versus own each release, then sorts and displays these by desirability. They set rate limits for using their site like this, so I made it it processes slowly, taking a second per record.
The ratio of good to crap isn’t miraculous, but its better than randomly gong through Discogs. It can also only do 100 records at a time. which means you only get a complete ranking if your query produces 100 results or less.
I was just reading the Keb Darge interview on here and noticed this bit.
About ten years ago i was being shown around that hotel and they mentioned they had a club in the 70s that was still downstairs, being used as a store room. They took us down and there it was, red velvet on the walls (peeling off now) dancefloor etc. They couldn’t tell me when it closed, but it certainly looked pretty untouched since the 70s from the decor.
I dont think you can really talk about crate digging without including Harry Smith, who basically invented it before WW2. He was the OG crate digger, in a time when used record stores didnt exist.
And being a crazy broke artist, he also had to invent the idea of old records having value, which he did by selling the idea of making compilation albums of his collected oddities.
As a side effect, he basically caused rock and roll of the sixties, as all the big dogs in the fifties “discovered” folk, blues, and country music because of his 3 record set Anthology of American Folk Music.
He was kind of the Aleister Crowley of crate digging.
Completely crazy, he owed everybody money.
Nobody knows exactly how many thousands, or tens of thousands, of records he had collected by 1950. They were lost as he frequently moved, didnt pay rent, and also collected paper airplanes, ukranian painted eggs, and anything shaped like a hamburger.
My friend and neighbor Bret Lunsford, who is known for his groups Beat Happening and D+ and his general involvement in the NW music scene, also wrote a book about Harry Smith, specifically about his youth on the Salish Sea, where he first began collecting records in Bellingham Wa.
Oh, cool! Thanks. I’ll look for it. To be honest I found his early work more interesting than his later times. Not only was he a precocious teenager in general, but he really did some pioneering research with the local tribes around Anacortes and Bellingham. Not to mention that I lived about an hour south of Anacortes for about two decades and went to Bellingham moderately often so know the whole area quite well.
And PS, I’m one of those oddballs who’s never really managed to connect with his famous Anthology of Folk despite several attempts. Still, I’m waiting for it from the library in order to try again.
I am much more interested in the idea of Harry Smith than the actual songs. I am sure they were important in 1951. But by 1970 I was much more interested in the future than the past. Just me.
I also live half the year in Edison Wa., so I can see Anacortes from my window, and my kids went to school in Bellingham.
And I found a lot of good music there, crate digging. TWO muslimgauze CDs, which are not common…
I currently have decided I prefer the Water to the Plumbing, so I am a purely digital crate digger these days. I bought vinyl from 66 to about 1990, CDs from the late 80s to about 2015, and its all on hard drives now. I gave away most of my vinyl, selectively in batches, to people I knew who wanted it more, and only sold the last few hundred.
Still have maybe 4000 CDs, and, I must admit, sometimes you have to buy a CD. Not everything is online.
I bought the Sabreena Da Witch CD a couple of years ago, I could not find any of the work of what is probably the best Palestinian female hip hop musician anywhere. I still do that occasionally- buy a CD of something that is digital unobtainium.
But I find more often that stuff I want is ONLY online, and, often, only for a short period.
Things pop up on Soundcloud or Bandcamp, and then arent there anymore.
The incredible Orchestra Omar album from Cairo was vinyl only at first, sold out quickly, and it was probably 2 or 3 years before they finally put it on bandcamp.
The album of Tranquility Bass remixes, Beep!!! is maybe on Apple- I wont buy from them- but If I really want it I probably will have to track down a used CD.
